Pollution to pristine? Syncrude set to test plan to turn tailing ponds into clean lakes

Sheila Pratt, Edmonton Journal12.02.2012

Process water samples before and after a coke treatment, at the Syncrude research plant in Edmonton on Nov. 28, 2012. Researchers are looking at new technology for the oilsands including ways to treat toxic tailings.Bruce Edwards
/ Edmonton Journal

A coagulant is added to fluid tailings at the Syncrude research lab in Edmonton on Nov. 28, 2012. Researchers are looking at new technology for the oilsands including ways to treat toxic tailings.Bruce Edwards
/ Edmonton Journal

Bitumen froth on an extractor, at the Syncrude research lab in Edmonton on Nov. 28, 2012. Researchers are looking at new technology for the oilsands including ways to treat toxic tailings.Bruce Edwards
/ Edmonton Journal

Research engineer Warren Zubot, shown here at the Syncrude research lab in Edmonton on Nov. 28, 2012, is part of a project looking at new technology to treat toxic tailings.Bruce Edwards
/ Edmonton Journal

Washing bitumen in boiling toluene, at the Syncrude research lab in Edmonton on Nov. 28, 2012. Researchers are looking at new technology for the oilsands including ways to treat toxic tailings.Bruce Edwards
/ Edmonton Journal

Glen Rovang is the manager of reseach and development at the Syncrude research lab in Edmonton, photographed on Nov. 28, 2012. The research plant is looking at new technology to treat toxic tailings.Bruce Edwards
/ Edmonton Journal

Syncrude’s large tailings pond, called Base Mine Lake, is seen with the oilands lab in the background. The company this month will start the process of cleaning up the pond so it can support acquatic life - a process expected to take decades. Millions of litres of fresh water will be poured into the lake and act as a cap on the toxic tailings which are expected to break down over time.
/ supplied syncrude

The jar contains mine tailings in water. The mix of sand, clay and chemicals has the texture of yogurt. Researchers at the Syncrude research lab in Edmonton are looking at new technology for the oilsands including ways to treat toxic tailings.Bruce Edwards
/ Edmonton Journal

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EDMONTON - For almost 20 years, thick, toxic sludge has poured into Syncrude’s tailings pond, the leftovers from the massive oilsands mine just off Highway 63, north of Fort McMurray. But not for much longer.

In just three weeks, the flow of tailings into Base Mine Lake will be stopped, the giant pipes removed and millions of litres of fresh water added as the company begins its landmark — and long-term — effort to turn the large tailings pond into a clean lake.

Syncrude has been working on the technology for 25 years in smaller tests ponds. If it works on this larger scale, the company will have the answer for a very stubborn problem facing every oilsands miner — how to clean and reclaim the toxic tailings ponds.

It’s a big shift from small test ponds now growing plant life to Base Mine Lake, which is eight square kilometres. The tailings, the texture of thick yogurt, are a mix of sand, clay, naphthenic acids and leftover bitumen — the by product of the process of separating the oil and sand to get sticky bitumen.

Syncrude is confident and the provincial government is watching closely. Last week the province gave the go-ahead for the “demonstration project” that will help Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development and the Energy Resources Conservation Board determine if the technology works on a commercial scale and is therefore a proven reclamation technique.

Syncrude got the green light Nov. 26 after coming up with an acceptable monitoring program to measure progress over the next decade on reducing toxicity of tailings at the bottom, cleaning the water on top and establishing aquatic life in the proposed end pit lake.

In May 2011, Alberta Environment gave Syncrude a permit to take water from nearby Beaver Creek reservoir — 12 million cubic litres annually — to pour into the tailings pond. That starts in the spring. The pond needs five metres of clean water on top of the tailings to keep a calm surface and make sure tailings don’t get stirred up.

If all goes as planned, the heavier tailings will settle to the bottom of the lake. Then, according to Syncrude, naturally occurring bacteria in the bottom sludge will eat the leftover hydrocarbons, naphthenic acids and other chemicals that make the tailings toxic to birds landing on the ponds.

Fresh water draining into the lake from a nearby forest — a restored old mine site — will also help support the aquatic life, from algae to zooplankton initially, says Syncrude.

Other oilsands companies are watching closely too. Syncrude has plans for about 30 new end pit lakes to be created on the landscape when the mining is finished, and about half of those will be used to store tailings — if Syncrude’s technology is successful. Most of the artificial lakes won’t appear for another 50 years or more.

The key question is how long it will take to turn liquid tailings into water clean enough to support natural eco-systems, says Brett Purdy, tailings expert in Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resources.

“The real crux of the matter is how long is acceptable? What is the acceptable timeline that meets the needs of the stakeholders and the government of Alberta which is responsible for protecting the public interest?,” said Purdy, who declined to be specific about an acceptable time limit.

A recent research report into end pit lakes raised a red flag on exactly that issue — that it could take decades to find out if the technology works. If it doesn’t, the province could be left with dozens of toxic lakes and not a real cleanup solution.

That report, written by the province’s Cumulative Effects Management Association, an agency that includes industry, environmentalists, First Nations and conservation groups, is now sitting with the environment department.

The report doesn’t make any recommendation for or against whether end pit lakes should be designated an appropriate way to store tailings or reclaim the landscape when a mine closes. But it suggests some regulations the province should consider if it approves end pit lakes as an appropriate technology.

Syncrude took issue with the report, saying it was biased against research it has conducted. The company, which started producing bitumen in 1978, has always supported research and worked for 25 years on the test ponds. It puts $60 million into research annually — fully half of which goes into environmental work.

In 1989, Syncrude took six small ponds, filled them with fine tailings and capped them with fresh water. Underwater plants soon appeared. In 1993, the company had similar success with larger test ponds, said company researcher Warren Zubot.

That year, the company was given conditional approval to create the end pit lake with tailings in the bottom.

“All our small ponds have underwater plants and the micro-organisms in the tailings are eating the hydrocarbons left in the fine tailings,” Zubot said.

“This hasn’t been done on a large scale, but we have a high confidence level in the technology.”

Three large permanent platforms are under construction to sit on the lake for testing water quality and a dozen smaller monitoring stations will keep track of how fast the algae and plankton start to grow, he added.

“We have to monitor it until the water is clean enough to flow out into the natural watershed,” said Zubot, adding it will take some years.

Glen Rovang, Syncrude’s manager of research and development, said the project achieves two goals. “It’s very exciting — we’ll get aquatic reclamation and very efficient low-energy tailings management.”

Tailings ponds have long come under fire from critics of the oilsands, especially after a 2008 incident when 1,600 ducks died in another Syncrude tailings pond. A year later, the Energy Resources Conservation Board came up with Directive 74, ordering companies to speed up their reclamation efforts and to reduce the amount of tailings that go into the massive ponds.

Syncrude, the second oldest operator in the mining area, is working on several new technologies to handle tailings.

In 2012, the company will spend $500 million on tailings facilities, including building a commercial demonstration of new centrifuge technology that spins sludge to remove water from the tailings.

It also devised a large-scale coke filter that takes particles out of tailings water.

A full-scale centrifuge, costing more than $3 billion, will be running in 2015. Canadian Oilsands Ltd, a partner in Syncrude, said in a release last week it will spend $700 million, their one-third share of the cost for the centrifuge.

As for the new lake, “We know the whole industry is watching,” said Cheryl Robb, Syncrude’s media relations adviser.

Syncrude, she noted, was the first oilsands company to get a reclamation certificate, for 104 acres of land that it restored.

That’s the end goal with the tailings pond, though it will be years before Syncrude could apply for a similar certificate on the new lake, Robb added.

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Pollution to pristine? Syncrude set to test plan to turn tailing ponds into clean lakes

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